The Hill News

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) misspoke when he said in a recent radio interview that President Obama grew up in Kenya, a Huckabee aide said.

"Gov. Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in Kenya. The governor meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia," spokesman J. Hogan Gidley told The Los Angeles Times.

"When the governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the president, he wasn't talking about the president's place of birth â€" the governor believes the president was born in Hawaii," Gidley continued. "The governor would, however, like to know more about where President Obama's liberal policies come from and what else the president plans to do to this country â€" as do most Am! ericans."

In a radio interview with WOR radio on Monday, Huckabee said that because Obama grew up in Kenya, he has different views than many Americans.

"[I]f you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather," Huckabee said in the interview.

Huckabee added that there’s a lot about Obama's views he "would love" to have clarified.

Although Huckabee didn't say that Obama was born outside of the U.S., Huckabee's comments call to mind the claims by the so-called "birthers" movement. They say Obam was! born outside the country and not in Hawaii, despite a birth c! ertifica te that attests to that, and is therefore ineligible to be president.

Along those lines, some argue Obama is Muslim. Last week, Huckabee struck down those rumors saying the president is a Christian.

Obama spent some of his childhood years with his mother in Indonesia, not Kenya. In his book, “Dreams From My Father,” he describes a distant relationship with his father.

Prominent Republicans have been split on the birthers claim. Some have flatly rejected it, while others have tried to dodge a straight answer.

Huckabee could run for president in 2012 and has said he plans to make a final decision soon. A Winthrop University poll released Wednesday found Huckabee the frontrunner, by far, in a handful of southern states among potential GOP contenders.